■ INDONESIA
Prison chief jailed for drugs
A Bali court sentenced a former prison security chief on Tuesday to four years in jail for drugs and weapons offenses. Muhammad Sudrajat was found guilty of possessing 0.2g of crystal methamphetamine and 50 rounds of ammunition. Sudrajat's arrest last September prompted police to investigate reports of a drug network in Bali's Kerobokan prison, where at least 10 Australians are serving heavy sentences for drug offenses. Sudrajat said after the conviction that he was sorry for tarnishing the image of the prison.
■ SAUDI ARABIA
Cleric defends dance
A prominent cleric has issued a rare public attack on religious hardliners angry over a video showing him dancing at a wedding, a newspaper reported on Tuesday. The video, posted online, showed Sheikh Abdul-Mohsen al-Obaikan dancing the Bedouin sword dance. Similar dances are also performed by royals at some national festivities. Wahhabist Sunni Islam frowns on singing and dancing. Obaikan, an adviser to the Ministry of Justice, defended himself in remarks published in Asharq al-Awsat, saying that society needed to "get over restrictions imposed by ignorant people." "They want to turn our weddings into funerals and joy to sadness," he said.
■ ESTONIA
Visa deal inked with US
The government signed a bilateral visa and air security deal with the US yesterday to pave the way to visa-free travel, ignoring protests from the European Commission. Latvia was scheduled to sign a similar deal yesterday, adding to a row between the EU executive and some new EU states keen to get US visa-free travel, but impatient to wait for the commission to do their negotiating for them. "Our common goal is to achieve visa-free travel for all EU member states," Interior Minister Juri Pihl said. "The realistic means for achieving this goal is bilateral negotiations."
■ INDIA
Police investigate police
The leader of the state of Goa promised on Tuesday to investigate allegations of local police incompetence made by the mother of a British teen found dead last month. Goa police at first said that 15-year-old Scarlett Keeling, whose bruised, partially undressed corpse was found on a beach just hours after she was seen at a nearby bar, had drowned. Chief Minister Digambar Kamat said police would find out if "there was a delay, mistake or laxity on the part of the officers." Police opened a murder investigation into Keeling's death on Sunday -- three weeks after she died.
■ THAILAND
Teens stealing scrap metal
Police vowed on Tuesday to crackdown harder on teens who prey on power pylons following the collapse of an electricity tower after the nuts and bolts holding it up were stolen and sold. The rampant theft of nuts and bolts from power pylons by teens who sell them as scrap metal caught the attention of media when a high-voltage electricity tower collapsed on Friday in Bangkok. No one was injured. Five teens were arrested for allegedly stealing the nuts and bolts. Police said the 17-year-olds admitted to selling them for US$44, which they spent in bars. The Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand said fixing the tower would cost up to 10 million baht (US$317,000).
■ UNITED STATES
Muslim elected to Congress
Indiana voters on Tuesday elected a Muslim to the US Congress, the second of that faith chosen in US history. Andre Carson, grandson of the late Democrat representative Julia Carson, was elected to serve the balance of her term in the US House of Representatives in a special election. She died in last December, after serving 11 years. The younger Carson, 33, a member of the Indianapolis City Council who converted to Islam about a decade ago, will serve out the remainder of his grandmother's term. The first Muslim member of the US Congress is Representative Keith Ellison of Minnesota.
■ MEXICO
Interior minister faces probe
The federal attorney general's office on Tuesday announced an investigation into allegations of corruption against Interior Secretary Juan Camilo Mourino stemming from his years as a federal congressman and top energy official. The announcement came after a prominent opposition politician produced a series of contracts dated from 2000 to 2004 between state oil monopoly Petroleos Mexicanos and the Mourino family business, Transportes Especializados Ivancar SA.
■ FRANCE
Concorde charges sought
A public prosecutor has asked judges to bring manslaughter charges against US carrier Continental Airlines over the July 2000 crash of a Concorde that killed 113 people, the prosecutor's office said on Tuesday. An investigation concluded that a piece of metal left on the runway from a Continental flight caused one of the Air France Concorde's tires to burst on takeoff and send debris into an engine causing the crash. The prosecutor also sought charges against a French engineer, the former head of France's civil aviation authority and two Continental Airlines employees.
■ UNITED STATES
House fails to overturn veto
Democrats in the House of Representatives have failed to overturn US President George W. Bush's veto of a bill that would have prohibited the CIA from using waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques on terrorist suspects. The vetoed legislation would have limited the CIA to using only the 19 interrogation methods approved in the Army Field Manual, which bans the use of waterboarding, a technique that simulates drowning. CIA Director Michael Hayden has confirmed that the spy agency used the technique on three terrorist suspects in 2002 and 2003. The 225 to 188 House roll call on Tuesday was 51 votes short of the two-thirds majority required to overturn a veto.
■ FINLAND
Book returned 100 years on
A library-goer apparently thought "better late than never" and quietly returned a book on loan for more than 100 years to a library in the southern town of Vantaa. The library had long since lost track of the loan but welcomed back to its collections the bound copy of a 1902 volume of Vartija, an active religious monthly periodical at the time. "We are unclear when exactly it was borrowed and who returned it. There weren't any documents with it," said Minna Saastamoinen. "There is an old note attached to the book which says there is a fine of 10 pennies a week for late returns." The library sticker inside the cover, and the old-fashioned handwriting on it, showed the book was loaned out at the beginning of the last century, she said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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